An interesting email is making the rounds, and it was recently sent to me by a friend. I do not know who wrote it, but the questions asked of the media in the email are to the point. Remember, the media were given a mention in the Bill of Rights – a little thing called freedom of the press. This spelled out freedom was judiciously given to the press to insure that someone would be watching our government and political process. A search for the truth by the media was expected by the Founding Fathers. An alert to the people of the truths uncovered was also expected by the Founding Fathers. The media of today appear to not understand that with a first amendment right, comes a deep and solemn responsibility. The following email seems to hit the issue squarely and asks tough questions of the media – questions which have gone unanswered.

Ain’t it the truth?????

A Guy named Joe, who happens to be a plumber with ambitions for a bigger business, questioned and challenged a Guy named Barack, who happens to be running for President of the US/Leader of the Free World?

And within 24 hours the Media has given us more information about Joe’s life than they’ve given us about Barack’s life in the past 18 months.

Thanks to a diligent press corps, we now know about Joe’s professional licensing status, his income tax situation, his employment history, his domestic squabbles, his voting record, everything associated with his personal identity; his education?. It’s probably been reported somewhere whether he wears boxers or briefs.

Thanks to a lazy press corps? We still don’t know what grades Obama made in college; how he got into Harvard; when he met Bill ‘the bomber’ Ayers; when he stopped doing illegal drugs; his medical history; whether he still smokes cigarettes; the extent of his affiliation with socialist/communist organizations; why he’s no longer a licensed attorney; whether he lied on his Bar application; Whether he’d qualify for a security clearance if he were just an average Joe;’ what passport he used to travel to Pakistan in 1981; who his ex-girlfriends are; whether he was or still is an Indonesian citizen; why his Kenyan grandmother insists he was born there; whether he was ever legally named Barry Soetoro or anything else besides Barack Hussein Obama;

Why he needed the help of a crook (Resco) to purchase his family home; where he was on Nov. 6 and 7, 1999; what the long-version of his birth certificate says; why he helped an anti-American, pro-Islamic candidate for Kenyan President against US interests; why he listened to Rev. Wright’s sermons for 20 years; how many times he took his kids to a Rev. Wright sermon; what he actually did as chair of the Annenberg Challenge; the depth of his relationship with ACORN?

Well, you get the idea

But, really, I am SO relieved that the Mainstream Media has done its job vetting Joe The Plumber, who is NOT running for public office, but who had the AUDACITY to challenge Barack Hussein Obama, who wants my vote for President of the United States of America.’

If Barack Obama is elected, we can only hope that the answer to each question put forth by the anonymous writer is benign. If the answers are not benign, than we have made a grave mistake.

A frightening change to the fabric of this democratic nation will occur shortly after we have elected Barack Obama to the Presidency. Since the Congress is likely to hold a filibuster proof majority for the Democrats, the Employee Free Election Act will likely be sent up to the White House to be signed into law. Barack Obama as a co-sponsor of the bill will, without a doubt, immediately sign it into law.

Why is this frightening and why will this change the fabric of our democratic nation? Well, to combat the oppression of companies, supposedly crushing attempted unionization, by firing workers who try to unionize at the work place – even though there is currently a required secret ballot for workers to elect to unionize or to not unionize. The employer simply does not know how the worker voted. The Democrats plan to change this and replace a secret ballot with a “Free Election” Act – eliminating the secret ballot and allowing a “dainty doily carrying” union organizer to sit in front of the worker while the worker fills out a preference card for a union. When 51% of the workers fill out a card and check off “yes” on union, the union will be certified by the National Labor Relations Board.

The Democratic Party plans to take away the secret ballot to help the worker. The D E M O C R A T I C Party will remove democracy from a union election to HELP the worker? The web site Open Congress describes this bill as:

OpenCongress Summary:
This is the Democrats’ chief labor bill (aka the Card-check bill). It would change the rules governing the formation of unions, the way first contracts between unions and employers are negotiated, and how employees’ rights are enforced. Under the bill, unions could be certified once a majority of employees have signed union authorization cards. The bill also designates a time line for first contracts to be drawn up between unions and employees. Finally, it would increase the fines employers must pay if found guilty of violating their employees’ right to unionize.

This alone should be pause enough to consider what will happen when the Democrats are swept into total control of this nation. If you want this “Vote For Change” – Yes They Can!

Before you vote for Obama, you might want to stop and think of who you would be placing in charge of this nation. Much has been said about Obama’s ties to radicals and his far left leanings to the point of creating nausea. Obama has denied or made little of each accusation. Is Obama telling the truth?

When he says that Ayers is a casual acquaintance or that he sat in Wright’s church for twenty years and never heard one of the anti-American sermons, is he telling the truth? He was close with Father Flegler and never heard him provide an anti-white, anti-American sermon? His personal and financial relationship with Tony Resco, where in strange financial dealings about Obama’s house have come to light. It involved a monetary windfall Obama received through the transaction of buying his home, from convicted felon Resco.

When all these relationships are not passing the smell test, and when combined the whole is actually greater than the sum of its parts. We now have serious cause to question just who this man is and how truthful Obama has been with us. The newest questionmark is Obama’s relationship with yet another Chicago radical, Rashid Kahlidi, an activist with strong ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization or better known as the PLO – formerly a serious terrorist organization and a criminal terrorist organization when Obama was apparently close to Kahlidi. The PLO is an enemy of Israel.

The L.A. Times apparently has a video tape wherein Obama reveals just how close he has been to this radical. The LA Times will not release the video tape. I ask, if the tape is benign than why not release it? The LA Times is a staunch supporter of Obama, you might even say they are in the tank for him. They are zealously are guarding this tape – why? They say they have promised the supplier of this tape that they would keep it out of public reach. Well the toothpaste is out of the tube. Are they withholding a tape that finally reveals just who Obama is and who he hangs with – a host of Chicago, anti-American, radicals? If the tape is nothing then release it. Withholding the tape tells this writer that they and Obama are hiding something big. Read the article at Allies of Palestinians seek a friend in Barack Obama, LA Times.

The nation appears to be moving left of center and the populace is more accepting of socialism. Recent polls indicate that about half the populace is just fine with wealth redistribution. These are the people who most likely are in lower paying jobs and have depended on the main stream media (MSM) to enlighten them on just how they are feeling about the economy. If we go back beyond the current maelstrom and look at the economy of say 2004, we would see very low unemployment (actually the definition of full employment), inflation under control, and a Gross Domestic Product moving along so well that many felt that it might overheat the economy. The MSM and the Democrats just kept telling the populace that they were hurting.

What moved the nation left in such a short time? Well the move has been percolating for some time; it just took some recent troubles and a Party in desperate need of achieving the White House to give it the shove it needed. This journey started many years ago. It started in our school systems and our universities. The ranks of the teachers union and our college instructors have become a magnet for those who do not produce a tangible product and have very social progressive beliefs – yes there are many very good teachers out there. You don’t believe me about the teachers union, well then why is the teachers union a major funder to block the California marriage amendment – what has this to do with furthering quality education. The union is making an ideology play. These ranks have become inhabited with secular progressives who hold the opinion and an ideology that what the person next to us does is of no concern to us. It is permissive ideology that eliminates accountability for one’s actions. It is an ideology that screams “It is not my fault that I have not succeeded – it is your fault”. The curriculum in our schools has spent precious little time teaching history and the various types of economies to our youth. We have not taught them that socialism has usually resulted in higher unemployment and a lower standard of living across the board for the populace.

Immediately after the presidential election of 2000, the Democrats, led by Howard Dean who is on the other end of the puppet strings held by George Soros, decreed that the Democratic Party would be in a perennial campaign for President, that the Party would fight the Republicans at every opportunity until the next presidential election. From that point forward the Democratic Party has been telling its faithful that they are hurting, suffering economic imbalance, and are owed more. When the 2001 attacks on the Trade Centers and the Pentagon threw this country into an economic tail spin, the Democrats told their faithful that it was the Republicans’ fault for the tail spin. When the country recovered from the downturn and started to boom, the Democrats told their faithful that they were hurting. Up until the beginning of this current recession, Democrats told their faithful that they were hurting. Democrats have used “big business or big oil” as a scapegoat for all Democratic Party caused scenarios – such as our failure to drill for our own oil or the mortgage crisis with the excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Democrats has help build the circumstances for the exodus of middle class jobs. Our Congress, both Republican and Democrat, and our Administration paid no attention to the exodus of middle class type jobs from our shores. Companies driven away by income and other taxes – higher here than elsewhere – moved jobs overseas to greener pastures. With those jobs went the middle class. These jobs were replaced by low end jobs, atypical of the middle class jobs our parents held. Under both the Democrats and Republicans, credit was used to artificially prop up our standard of living. Credit cards and credit card balances skyrocketed. Our leaders were happy to see the money supply expand and the economy grow through the use of credit purchases, including home equity credit lines used to either pay down credit cards, thus freeing up more purchasing power or providing cash for large purchases. This enormous expansion of credit artificially inflated the money supply and made the economy, sans good jobs, continue to grow.

Instead of addressing the root cause, the evaporation of good middle class jobs, our leaders, both Democratic and Republican, helped to push credit to non-credit worthy people – non-credit worthy strictly in a lending sense. They were not credit worthy mostly due to a culture that now fosters a lack of drive to be responsible that has been spreading in our country -“It’s not my fault – I am a victim”.

Between the MSM, Democratic Party, loss of good jobs, and blind Republicans we have wiped out the true middle class in America, taught our young that everything is owned them, convinced even those who are still doing well that they are hurting. Along comes the credit crisis and the collapse of the stock market sucking 401k’s into the vortex and you have the perfect incubator for socialism. Obama’s rise is testament to this change. We can only hope that our future experiment with socialism will be reversible and that no permanent damage will be done.

Socialism may be coming to a country near you soon. Yes, if Senator Obama and the Senate and House Democrats win, it will be the end of the trail for capitalism. The secular progressive movement, led by George Soros and his minions, has been funneling money into the Democratic Party and to its candidates for some time now, with the intent on building a slate of Senators and Representatives who are decidedly socialists by nature. The crowning achievement for the movement was the support provided a Senator chosen early on for his socialist beliefs to run for President, Barack Obama. Read: Soros poised for payback on his political investment an editorial from the The Examiner.

George Soros will now have a superhighway to Change – Socialist Change. We will see wealth redistribution on a grand scale – Obama said it himself recently when he told a hard working self employed plumber that he will experience wealth distribution – his wealth will go to some one else. We will see the single largest growth in government in the history of this nation. We will expand the culture that people are not accountable to themselves or to others and that regardless of their actions, government will attempt to take care of them, albeit in a grossly inefficient manner. Who will be the arbiter of just how much wealth will be redistributed at any time?

There are basically three economic systems found in the world. Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism are the three, but no one is practiced in its purest sense. We might ask why an economic system is important.

“…a country’s economic system determines the allocation of the nation’s resources of labor, land, machinery, materials, etc. between their alternative possible uses.” “… a country’s economic system determines the distribution between the individuals in the nation of that which is produced using the nation’s resources.” “We need to know how an economic system attempts to solve the problems of allocation and distribution before we can see why there is unemployment, inflation, poverty, and so on.” These quotes were taken from an old text book “Introduction to Economics” by John Craven.

Socialism is chosen by some as an artificial means of controlling unemployment and poverty. The problem with this noble effort is that time after time, in national experiment after experiment, it actually creates more unemployment and more poverty. The key element of socialism, redistribution of wealth, actually reduces the incentive for those who create jobs by growing businesses and making wealth for themselves. When the incentive is removed, as there can be no success in business, the effort dwindles and the economy shrinks. The shrinking economy fosters more government programs, and greater protectionism. More government programs means taking more from those who “have it” and giving it to others, until the loss in incentive becomes a vicious cycle. As protectionism grows, the cost of imported goods rises, and the ability to export diminishes, further restricting jobs, increasing unemployment, and increasing the price of goods and services. The vicious cycle continues. By now you get my point.

Socialism is a misguided effort by those who do not learn very well from history. Read “Disillusioned with Socialism: South Asia experiments with free enterprise.” Europe has toyed with socialism. Just look at their GDP and unemployment rates – they are far worse than the capitalistic United States. Europeans have learned that once you start the wealth re-distribution project for those who are either not motivated to contribute to society or have been unsuccessful, you have spread the proverbial toothpaste into the culture and that toothpaste cannot be placed back into the tube easily. Europeans are paying the socialism price now – yet we do not learn from the failed experiment. Be careful of what you seek.

What we do have here is a lawyer, an avowed socialist masquerading as a populist, supported by the George Soros machine. Barack Obama is about to achieve an ignoble change in our economic system by taking income from hardworking productive people – medium and small business owners – job creators, and redistributing it to those who either have been less fortunate or are simply not as productive. If he is elected, we shall see just how effective this lawyer’s theory is: reduce the incentive of hard workers to work hard; forcibly share what they have worked for; and grow government to create jobs. The theory fails to take into account that without the medium and small business job creation machine; jobs will be lost, not created.

Remember, the man, Barack Obama, has never run anything, managed anything, or built anything, in his life. He is a lawyer turned socio-economic theorist. Remember that his espoused social plan has not worked in the past and will not work now.

Just when will the brain trust in Washington, D.C. realize that it has to insure the creditors of the nation’s National Banks? Just when will the brain trust realize that it has no choice but to lift Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) “Mark to Market” rules or at least modify them? Due to the inability to properly Mark to Market mortgage portfolios, the banks simply do not have sufficient capitalization to lend – the ratios are GONE. The piecemeal fix chosen by Treasury Secretary Paulson and our Administration is rapidly bringing this country’s economy to a standstill. Every day a new and different piece to the “secret” plan appears – is there no single master plan that can be published?

Former Head of the FDIC, William Isaac, has said “…One alternative is a “net worth certificate” program along the lines of what Congress enacted in the 1980s for the savings and loan industry. It was a big success and could work in the current climate. The FDIC resolved a $100 billion insolvency in the savings banks for a total cost of less than $2 billion. The net worth certificate program was designed to shore up the capital of weak banks to give them more time to resolve their problems. The program involved no subsidy and no cash outlay. The FDIC purchased net worth certificates (subordinated debentures, a commonly used form of capital in banks) in troubled banks that the agency determined could be viable if they were given more time. Banks entering the program had to agree to strict supervision from the FDIC, including oversight of compensation of top executives and removal of poor management…” Read the entire article A Better Way To Aid Banksby William Isaac at The Washington Post.

Unless and until the banks can lend again to both consumers and businesses, we will continue to experience a deflationary economy, one that is essentially closed for business. The ripple effect is currently being felt in the stock market. Before anyone makes a crack that the “fat cats are getting what they deserve”, consider that millions of Americans have retirement portfolios in the stock market as investments or HAD retirement portfolios in the stock market. The markets have moved beyond looking at book value or earnings growth ratios for equity pricing. The many analysts who normally provide ratings and reviews of the myriad of equities and bonds in the market place, have through a complete loss in understanding of what will happen next, capitulated, and have no prognostications – they are frozen. Experts are frozen. There simply is insufficient information available to recommend an investing path. All the traditional safe plays have tanked. Then should anyone be trading?

Both corporate and municipal pension plans have seen a drain in value from 15% to as much as 35%. Individuals in or near retirement have no way to recoup their losses. Money is draining from mutual funds at an alarming rate. The general loss in wealth for this country’s citizens, while we wait for the Treasury death by drip, drip plan to kick in, as they are acting in a deliberate manor, while the world crumbles around them, is astounding. The only exempt group from this loss of pension wealth is the government worker because their pension is set under parameters of retirement.

The Administration, Congress, and the Federal Reserve need to immediately:

Eliminate Mark to Market or at least temporarily modify it.

Guaranty all creditors of this country’s National Banks.

Cease trading on all domestic stock exchanges, to allow a cooling off period.

Reverse the current property value deflation by stimulating the purchase of resale homes – a special limited time, one year, super low rate mortgage program offered through the FHA; perhaps a 7 year adjustable rate mortgage. (An Alternative to the Massive Mortgage Bailout!)

Offer a substantial tax credit for the purchase of residential resale home foreclosures between now and June 30, 2009.

The lack of speedy supplementary post reaction to the rescue bill, in light of the markets meltdown, represents gross malfeasance by this Administration. It appears that no one in Washington has a clue. Nancy Pelosi is talking a stimulus package – spoken by someone who is pandering for votes while the country’s economic system melts down. She and Harry Reid should be calling the House and Senate back into special session to work on a mortgage program and only a mortgage program – no pork, no electioneering! This is no longer about the million or so homeowners in foreclosure. It is now about the 50 million in or near retirement suffering retirement financial failure.